Is Ridge Returning? Is The Bold and the Beautiful Casting a New Ridge Forrester?

Soap Opera Digest is speculating that The Bold and the Beautiful are re-casting the role of Ridge Forrester on The Bold and the Beautiful. This conjecture is based upon a casting call that The Bold and the Beautiful has put out to case a character named “Harper”.

It has been the practice to use a pseudonym when casting characters which means “Harper” could in fact be “Ridge”.

The casting call is for an actor that is at least 5’ 11” tall with strong credits for this contract role.
“Harper “is further described as a Caucasian man in his mid-to-late 40s, and, “Handsome and very upscale. He’s also a Great business man with a commanding presence; refined – comes from money.

That certainly sounds like it could be Ridge but is it?

Ridge Forrester would be a tough character to recast with Ronn Moss having portrayed the character for 25 years from The Bold and the Beautiful’s inception in 1987. Moss was one of the show’s core four and the character , Ridge, and Moss’s portrayal of him were hugely popular. So much so, that many fans couldn’t imagine the Bold and the Beautiful without Ridge when news broke last year that the actor was saying goodbye.

The Ridge Forrester and Brooke Logan love match had been such a big part of the show’s history, imagining the show without a Ridge and Brooke storyline of some kind was hard to do.
But like Brooke, The Bold and the Beautiful fans got used to life without Ridge. Dare I say, some of us haven’t really missed him?

Ridge hasn’t been seen on our TV screens since his and Brooke’s honeymoon from which Brooke returned alone and Ridge was suddenly living in Paris and presumably working at International.

The character has been mentioned several times, with Steffy jetting off to Paris every time something goes wrong between her and Liam, and Thomas threatening to move to Paris when things weren’t going his way at Forrester Creations.
Ridge’s presence was notably missed during Steffy’s marriage to Liam and her subsequent baby loss. Not to mention Stephanie, Ridge’s own mother’s, death…

With Ridge being absent for all these significant events does it make sense to recast the character now? Thomas, though not officially in the basement anymore is only wheeled out for beach/pool party scenes, Steffy is off in Paris, and Taylor is gone.
Seemingly the only person left in LA that Ridge has any conflict with is Brooke.

Is that enough to base this character’s return upon?
Do you want Ridge Forrester to return? And if you could chose any soap opera actor to step into Ronn Moss’s shoes and bring Ridge back to life, who would it be?